Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Let no one underestimate the need of pity. We live in a stony universe whose hard, brilliant forces rage fiercely.
The resolution to avoid an evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.
Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.
Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to.
By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths.
I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.
My parents used to rent old movies - my whole childhood is in black and white - and it was my dream to make films.
Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
The books are recordings; that's what they have to be, recordings of the writing. They have to be happening to me.
How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?
I should wonder what courage—which is the virtue they most value—has to do with a metal ring through your nostril.
It's strange to see people you don't know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks
I think it's a human tendency that's been around for a while to try to be as good as possible to prove your worth.
I didn't realize until that moment that Dauntless initiation had taught me an important lesson: how to keep going.
Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained.
In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.
If you can read and have more imagination than a doorknob, what need do you have for a 'movie version' of a novel?
If the devil doesn't exist... how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?
The only time I've been arrested was in opposing the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana. That was in 1979.
My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.
I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
I tend to admire dead people more than the living. All too often, human reality diminishes the glowing reputation.
There is nothing more distressing or tiresome than a writer standing in front of an audience and reading his work.
I don't have to write about the future. For most people, the present is enough like the future to be pretty scary.
One tries to tell a truth, and one hopes that the truth has a general application rather than just a specific one.
I think they've got 250 languages in Nigeria, and so English is a sort of lingua franca between the 250 languages.
Oh, my young friends, how delightful is the beginning of a love-business, and how undignified, sometimes, the end!
Next to eating good dinners, a healthy man with a benevolent turn of mind, must like, I think, to read about them.
You, who are ashamed of your poverty, and blush for your calling, are a snob; as are you who boast of your wealth.
For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.
You see, our hard-earned saving are always going to be taken away from us by someone - whether we have any or not.
It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.
It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.
This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
He did say I fascinated him, but he really should have clarified to me that I was just the fascination for the day.
In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range
Don't think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind.
Where do one's fears come from? Where do they shape themselves? Where do they hide before coming out into the open?
I have always been so sure - too sure... But now I am very humble and I say like a little child: "I do not know..."
Look, when AIs come up, they're not going to be like us. A self-aware, sentient AI is not going to be like a human.
Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever.
As for the outside world, the artist is confronted by what he sees; but what he sees is primarily what he looks at.
State has the primary responsibility but the citizen has to spend his or her funds. This is part of neo-liberalism.
I was an anxious kid. I worried about getting homework finished, even back when homework didn't count for anything.
I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.
Charles had once remarked that holding onto a resentment was like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.
For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.